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From Odd Bod Alan Wiltshire, ex-F/Off NAV of Mount Eliza
First day at Somers found that I suffered from hay-fever as a result of filling my mattress with straw – I sneezed all night!
Come week-end leave, filing onto buses for transport to Frankston railway station was done alphabetically in groups – hence 'W' was at the end of the queue and on more than one occasion half a dozen or so of us were left behind. However, fatigue duty saw a reversal of the procedure and we tail-enders became the first to qualify.
I think the majority of us were convinced there was castor-oil in the stewed apples served on a Friday and bromide was in the tea pre-leave. How naive we all were.
My first rifle drill saw me as one of the 20 or 30 formed up in line and dreamily I lowered the muzzle down with the consequence of the Drill W/O letting out a roar with "Look at than man pointing his rifle at his mate's arse! What do you think he will be saying from up there after you have pulled the trigger? Right, four times around the parade ground at the double."
No.2 Air Observers School, Mt.Gambier. My first view of an aeroplane on the ground…wow, an Anson 2-engined bomber. We soon found that in a strong wind they could be made to "hover" or even fly backwards. We also learned very quickly not to have a bladder so full that urgent relief was necessary by way of a pipe with funnel and the likelihood of a blowback in the face. Who will ever forget that knuckle-skinner of a job winding up the wheels of an Anson. I cannot remember the number of turns but I would guess somewhere about 90 plus.
No.2 Bombing and Gunnery School at Port Pirie. Had the pleasure of severing the cable trailing the target drogue but unfortunately such an action was seen to be 'bad shooting'. The main pleasures of smelly, hot Port Pirie were the odd week-end leaves you could scrounge enabling a visit to distant Adelaide with its comforts like the Comfort Hut or was it the Cheer-up Hut down by the river and the Ambassadors and Nap pubs.
Astro-Navigation School Nhill. Because it was an Astro-Navigation training school most of our flying was done at night and on one occasion, having returned to my hut pretty exhausted, I removed my 'teddy-bear' flying suit and dropped it onto the floor beside my bed and lay down on the bed to have a last fag. I awoke to find I was being dragged out of the hut by my feet with the bed and the hut engulfed in flames. My pay for many weeks was docked with an amount towards the costs incurred.
Embarkation---I travelled on the Nieu-Amsterdam which had come through from the Middle East with a fine cargo of 'bugs' which, after one night in a cabin, caused me to pick up my bedclothes and find a bug free place up on deck. I decided on what I called the 'poop' deck down at the blunt end where I found a coil of rope which I softened up as best I could with my life jacket. My main concern turned out to be a hose down early in the morning but other than that inconvenience it wasn't too bad. The meals were shockers, two a day consisting in the main of a hard-boiled egg and a whopper of a boiled potato. Our destination was San Francisco and then up to Canada for further training but we heard there was an urgency in the U.K. for replacement aircrew, consequently we were diverted across the States to Halifax, Nova Scotia where we boarded the new French liner, the Louis Pasteur. Crossing the Atlantic through violent storms led me to comment to a crew member on the severity of the rolls to which he replied not to worry until I saw the funnels dipping in the water!
Despite the supposed urgency for aircrew we seemed to spend quite a bit of time at Bournemouth, the Australians' reception centre down on the south coast. Included was a short period up at RAAF Headquarters in Kodak House, Kingsway, London where I helped out in the postal section. I lived out in Nutford Place off Edgeware Road enjoying London's nightlife and experiencing at first hand some of the bombing of London. One Sunday after my return to Bournemouth the air-raid sirens sounded around 1pm but in typical fashion we said "some poor blighters along the coast are copping it" and really took little notice until suddenly one minute I was relaxing on my bed and the next I knew I was flat out on the floor across the room and covered with shattered glass from where the windows and walls of the two-storied building had been. Rushing out and looking back I had to laugh as I observed one of our fellows still sitting dazed on a lavatory now exposed to the world. It had been a low level attack by a number of FW140 planes armed with bombs and then they did low level runs across the gardens machine-gunning the people lying out on the lawns. We later attended the funeral of 12 of our fellows but that night Lord Haw-Haw came on his radio to say, "How did you like that, Aussies? When you go to Brighton we will have another go when you settle in at the Metropole".
My most vivid recollections of No.4 A.F.U. at West Freugh near Stranraer, Scotland:
1. the dreadful flying weather
2. the scarcity of food not only on the station but in Stranraer where over a week-end every shop was boarded up
3. the saucers of 'golden syrup' or plum jam on our mess tables and the battle to beat the wasps getting the lot.
One vivid memory of life at 27 O.T.U. Lichfield relates to the purchase, for £2, of a bicycle to enable movement around the station and getting to and from Lichfield town. A group of us had cycled into town for a few drinks and then on to the local dance and also to collect my bag of laundry washed and ironed by a kindly old soul. In the early hours, long after the dance was finished, I was flat out down this long steep hill back to the 'drome when wham - the bag of laundry got caught up in the front wheel and base over apex I went to finish up in the middle of the road with my head split and eventually hours later staggering into the station to rouse some medical attention and receive some stitching up of my skull.
I suppose I could resurrect many more 'snippets' but right now the brain is not functioning as well as it should.